movie review for the good house

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The Good House Reviews

If you crave something deeper, and more meaningful, this will not be the movie for you.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Mar 6, 2024

The Good House has all the ingredients. They’ve just been overcooked.

Full Review | Apr 26, 2023

File this under movies that start slow but get better as it progresses, topped with a satisfying ending. Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline's reunion is definitely the reason to see this.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 2, 2023

Portrait of an accomplished real estate agent suffering from alcoholism and the disease of playing God.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2022

Sigourney Weaver's feisty performance as an alcoholic real-estate agent is the main reason to watch this uneven dramedy. The movie's storyline about seeking a redemptive comeback is handled better than the movie's storyline about finding love.

Full Review | Dec 28, 2022

While The Good House has a solid cast, it really showcases Weaver’s talent and versatility.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 2, 2022

Hildy deserves a second chance at love, but the core of the film — in Weaver’s remarkably capable hands — is her love/hate relationship with alcohol. It’s a relationship many of us can relate to. Weaver’s performance makes 'The Good House' pretty great.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Nov 28, 2022

The Good House isn’t a great movie but until its overly melodramatic final 10 or so minutes, it’s a pretty darn good one.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2022

Sigourney Weaver is the star of this movie but I wish Kevin Kline had been more than just a supporting player.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 13, 2022

Playing with words and mood, The Good House manages a surprising balancing act between lightweight tone and serious subject.

Full Review | Oct 10, 2022

Sigourney Weaver is terrific, handling the role with aplomb. It’s a delicate balancing act with the shift from light comedy to weighty material. Seeing her reunite with Kline after two decades is itself worth the price of admission.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 9, 2022

Sigourney Weaver takes the ball and runs with a performance that strengthens a middling script and reunites her on screen with a frequent acting partner in Kevin Kline.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2022

An uneven character study that’s redeemed to a great extent by Weaver’s exceptional lead performance.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Oct 6, 2022

Don't expect flying on broomsticks or a Witches of Eastwick-type pay off here: This well-made dramedy about the complexities of single, senior womanhood is far more grounded.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2022

It's a great role for Weaver, who always appears so smartly in-control—we want to believe Hildy's delusions even as we witness their unraveling.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2022

The Good House is a movie that many will skip over but should spend the time with as it is just as engaging a portrait of New England life as Manchester by the Sea and every bit a showcase for the one and only Sigourney Weaver.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 4, 2022

It proves to be a wonderful vehicle for Weaver who (inexplicably) hasn't been given a role this meaty in a long time. Watching her navigate between comically sardonic and tragically damaged is a treat.

For much of its runtime, this film is a pale shadow of its source material, a rote visualization of a story better suited to the page than to the screen.

Full Review | Oct 3, 2022

Weaver makes it watchable.

Full Review | Oct 2, 2022

What makes the film watchable is Weaver, proving to be an example of another recent film in which the lead actress gives a great performance in a flawed production. She gives a strong, multi-faceted performance but, alas, it’s not enough to save the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 2, 2022

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‘The Good House’ Review: Sigourney Weaver Plays a Woman With a Secret Everyone Else Can See

In one of Weaver's best performances, the star brings her alpha, own-the-room energy to a character who's deluded herself into believing that her alcoholism isn't a problem.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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A middling movie with a must-see performance at its core, “ The Good House ” does something interesting with the notion of the unreliable narrator. As the unfortunately named Hildy Good (blame novelist Ann Leary, not married filmmakers Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky for that decision), Sigourney Weaver brings deceptive self-confidence to the role of a small-town Realtor. We meet Hildy introducing a couple to the fictional New England fishing village where the Good family has lived for so long, there’s talk of witches in their past. But Hildy can’t be trusted — not because her character is bad (she’s Good, get it?), but because she’s in denial.

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“The Good House” may not be a great movie, but Hildy Good is among Weaver’s best performances. What makes watching this career woman struggle to keep it together so compelling is the gap between how she perceives herself and what the rest of the world sees. Her drinking problem is only part of the picture. There’s also a generational aspect to the way she copes with life’s pressures. At one point, her eldest daughter, Tess (Rebecca Henderson), mentions going to therapy, and Hildy’s reaction reveals that she sees this as a sign of weakness. But her method of self-medicating (with alcohol, obviously) is hardly an indicator of strength, and it’s telling just how destabilized Hildy is when the shrink (Rob Delaney) renting her spare apartment suggests the obvious: that she never really dealt with her mother’s suicide, but instead uses work and various other distractions to escape it.

The filmmakers remain closely aligned with Hildy’s subjective (read unreliable) view of her life through the movie’s miscalculated — and blatantly manipulative — climax, when a local boy goes missing and we’re led to believe that she might be responsible. Hildy’s prone to blackouts (she uses the term “jackpots” to describe embarrassing public displays you can’t take back), and we’ve seen her making excuses for drunk driving more than once already. Could she be responsible? “The Good House” needs something big to get through to Hildy, to shake her free of the delusion that she’s got it all under control. This finale risks turning everything that’s come before into a cheap Nicholas Sparks-style soap. But it’s satisfying to watch how Hildy sees the good in others — like Kline’s scuzzily endearing character — throughout, and the ending reveals where her life was headed, if she’d kept going in the same direction.

Reviewed online, Sept. 29, 2022. In Toronto Film Festival 2021. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 103 MIN.

Production: A Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions release of a Lionsgate, DreamWorks Pictures, Participant, Reliance Entertainment presentation of an Amblin Partners production. Producers: Jane Rosenthal, Berry Welsh, Aaron Ryder. Executive producers: Erika Hampson, Steve Samuels, Christos Konstantakopoulos, Jeff Skoll, Robert Kessel.
Crew: Directors: Maya Forbes, Wally Wolodarsky. Screenplay: Thomas Bezucha, Maya Forbes & Wally Wolodarsky, based on the novel by Ann Leary. Camera: Andrei Bowden Schwartz. Editor: Catherine Haight. Music: Theodore Shapiro.
With: Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Rebecca Henderson.

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Sigourney weaver in ‘the good house’: film review | tiff 2021.

In a comic drama also featuring Kevin Kline, the 'Alien' star plays a New England real estate agent who understands all her neighbors’ problems but is deep in denial about her own.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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Hildy Good, the whip-smart and self-deluding Realtor at the center of The Good House , spends a significant portion of screen time breaking a wall — the fourth one, that is. In lesser hands, such a narrative device could be distracting or downright annoying. But Hildy, an alcoholic who’s pretending to be in recovery, is played by Sigourney Weaver , who makes every exasperated glance, incisive put-down and dissembling excuse absolutely magnetic. Her direct-to-camera comments are not merely asides but the core of the film. And, in ways both intentional and not, Hildy’s remarks to the audience are far more compelling than what transpires between her and most of the not-quite-dimensional small-town characters who surround her — the key exception being the high school flame Hildy reconnects with, played to perfection by Kevin Kline .

The Good House

Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Gala Presentations)

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, David Rasche, Beverly D’Angelo, Paul Guilfoyle, Kathryn Erbe

Directors: Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky

Screenwriters: Thomas Bezucha, Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky

A big fish in a small pond, Hildy has long been a highly successful real estate agent in her hometown on Boston’s North Shore. The market, though, like all markets, is changing. Wealthy investors and corporate interests are moving in, a onetime protégé (Kathryn Erbe, in a thanklessly cartoonish role) has become a cutthroat competitor, and business isn’t what it used to be. Even so, Hildy keeps playing the role of munificent provider, helping to cover expenses for her aggrieved daughters — the glum married one (Rebecca Henderson) and the angsty aspiring artist (Molly Brown) — and continuing to pay alimony to the ex-husband (David Rasche) who left her for a man (but who, like Hildy, is now single).

The idea of real estate as a window into the soul is central to the source material, and some of Hildy’s comments to us are drawn straight from the novel. She can tell you the state of a marriage after one quick walk-through of a kitchen. Chief among the unhappily marrieds are a pair of well-to-do town newbies (Morena Baccarin and Kelly AuCoin) and a psychiatrist ( Rob Delaney ) and his perpetually dour wife (Laurie Hanley).

Baccarin’s Rebecca becomes a confidant to Hildy, and no kitchen audit is needed to sense her vulnerability and discontent. But mainly the assembled characters’ stories have little dimension other than as plot devices. (Less about plot and more about narrative color are Beverly D’Angelo’s boozy, throaty-voiced friend of Hildy’s, and Paul Guilfoyle’s 12-step veteran and coffee-shop regular, both suggesting the protagonist’s lifelong connections in the community.)

As imperious as she can be, this proud descendant of a Salem “witch” is also damn impressive. Faced with the hard-to-sell house of a working-class couple (Georgia Lyman and Jimmy LeBlanc) who are desperate to move to a larger town and a better school for their autistic son (Silas Pereira-Olson), Hildy masterfully puts together a renovation plan to up their home’s salability. A key part of that plan is Frank (Kline), whose blue-collar scruffiness belies the fact that he’s one of the wealthiest men in town, a thriving garbage-collection service among the businesses he owns.

Driving past a gas station where Frank’s filling up his tank, Hildy swoops in to make her renovation proposal, and their sparring, flirting chemistry jolts the story to a new level. Grooving to the Argent song blasting from his truck radio (one of several boomer-friendly tunes punctuating the soundtrack), Frank looks at Hildy’s Realtor getup and sees a masquerade: “The butcher’s daughter’s gone fancy-pants.”

Other than Frank — and us — who else is worth Hildy’s conversational effort? Many people bore, disappoint or infuriate her (and who can’t relate to that?). It’s a treat to watch her react to the off-the-charts self-involvement of her useless young assistant (a terrifically funny turn by Imogene Forbes Wolodarsky, the directors’ daughter). Unapologetically judgmental and keenly perceptive, Hildy harbors a massive blind spot only when it comes to her own life.

Having been subjected to an intervention — or, as she calls it, an ambush — staged by her family and seen in wry flashback, she’s well past rehab when we meet her. In public she plays the part of someone in recovery, decorously sipping club soda; her evenings are spent downing bottles of merlot. Just as she can’t bring herself to admit the financial strain she’s feeling, Hildy dismisses her daughters’ concern about her drinking as misplaced. (It’s telling that when she refers to “my girls,” Hildy means her dogs.) “Wine is not really drinking,” she asserts. Invoking the therapeutic benefits of booze in a way that recalls Another Round , she declares that she was “born three drinks short of comfortable.” Beneath all these justifications is a sad backstory that speaks to generational differences in how people think about alcohol: Hildy is quick to make the distinction between “a real alcoholic” like her mother and her own high-functioning indulgence.

Forbes, having been a longtime writer-producer of The Larry Sanders Show , understands the friction between professional façade and crumbling spirit. She tackled the subject of mental illness in the well-observed, if insistently upbeat, Infinitely Polar Bear. Observational comedy is her forte, and also that of Wolodarsky ( Seeing Other People ). In The Good House , they don’t quite make the soapy neighborhood developments, or most of the present-day family stuff, matter. In Weaver’s enthralling performance, though, they have their story’s beating heart. And with Bezucha they’ve crafted some deliriously stinging lines for their star.

The chirpy notes of Theodore Shapiro’s score in the film’s early sections are part of Forbes and Wolodarsky’s scheme of misdirection: Like Hildy, they’re trying to convince us that this is all fun. Eventually, they’ll pull the rug out from under us as well as Hildy, with less therapy-speak than one might fear. To their credit, they don’t deny the joyful buzz of intoxication. In a scene of celebration over a big real estate deal, exquisitely played by Weaver, the directors and DP Andrei Bowden Schwartz capture in glowing intimacy the way the drinks blossom in Hildy, the way a certain warming and disinhibition switches on.

Only a couple of characters in this New England-set film (Nova Scotia provides the picturesque maritime ambience) speak with a New England accent. In a way that’s something of a relief; many a fine actor has strained themselves, and our credulity, over those regional vowels (Exhibit A: Mystic River ). Even though Hildy has spent her whole life in Massachusetts, her lack of a Boston accent might be interpreted as a reflection of her worldly, business-minded perspective.

In contrast, the local inflection in Frank’s speech expresses his down home lack of pretension; he’s self-sufficient and, unlike Hildy, couldn’t give a damn what people think of him. With his effortlessly droll, low-key performance, Kline creates quite the mensch. However rom-com formulaic the trajectory of Hildy and Frank’s relationship, it’s impossible not to root for these two sexagenarians, especially during their first awkward date, the conversational lulls filled by the sound of cracking shells and spurting lobster juice.

The two actors’ previous onscreen pairings include The Ice Storm , Ang Lee’s masterpiece and one of the great films about American suburbia. The Good House has nothing particularly incisive to say about its locale, or even about the business of real estate. Hildy’s success means that she’ll be helping to change her burg into one of those tony destinations filled with second homes and showy estates. There are big questions churning beneath the story, yet even Hildy’s personal turmoil feels somehow too neat. In the film’s sharp comic observations, though, and especially its two fine leads, something real and messy sparks to life.

Full credits

Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Gala) Production companies: DreamWorks Pictures, Participant Media and Reliance Entertainment present a Filmnation Entertainment production in association with Faliro House Amblin Partners, Tribeca Productions, FilmNation Entertainment Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, David Rasche, Beverly D’Angelo, Paul Guilfoyle, Kathryn Erbe, Kelly AuCoin, Georgia Lyman, Rebecca Henderson, Molly Brown, Jimmy LeBlanc, Imogene Forbes Wolodarsky, Laurie Hanley, Silas Pereira-Olson Directors: Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky Screenwriters: Thomas Bezucha, Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky Based on the novel The Good House by Ann Leary Producers: Jane Rosenthal, Berry Welsh, Aaron Ryder Executive producers: Erika Hampson, Steve Samuels, Christos Konstantakopoulos, Holly Bario, Jeff Skoll, Robert Kessel Director of photography: Andrei Bowden-Schwartz Production designer: Carl Sprague Costume designers: Ann Roth, Matthew Pachtman Editor: Catherine Haight Music: Theodore Shapiro Casting directors: Laura Rosenthal, Jodi Angstreich Sales: UTA, ICM Partners

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'The Good House' review: Sigourney Weaver deserves a nod for best actress

Weaver turns what could have been a cliched comedy-drama into something more.

Sigourney Weaver in "The Good House," 2022.

Sigourney Weaver is a goddess. From "Alien" to "Avatar," she always comes through with something extra to make her movies remarkable. That is definitely the case with "The Good House," only in theaters, in which Weaver turns what could have been a cliched suburban comedy-drama into something funny, touching and vital.

As Hildy Good, a realtor in her hometown on Boston's North Shore, Weaver is every inch the successful business wiz, which has nothing to do with Hildy being a descendant of a Salem witch, though she is. Hildy is just damn good at her job -- no hocus pocus involved.

Still, Hildy keeps secrets. She's a functional alcoholic who's faking her recovery, a sham that sparks her adult daughters, the unhappily married Tess (Rebecca Henderson) and the unhappily artistic Emily (Molly Brown), to stage an intervention. "Wine is not really drinking," retorts Hildy, trying to laugh them off, despite the vodka she sneaks when no one's looking.

PHOTO: Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver in "The Good House," 2022.

Hildy's problems are real. She's basically supporting her daughters as the real estate market becomes even more competitive. Her protégé (Kathryn Erbe) is trying to steal her clients. And she's forking over alimony to her ex-husband Scott (David Rasche) who has left her for a man, all of which had previously led to a stint in rehab.

We know all this because Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky, the married couple who wrote and directed "The Good House" from the 2013 bestseller by Ann Leary, have allowed Hildy to address the audience directly in comments both hilarious and heartbreaking. The way Hildy says she can define homeowners through the state of their kitchens cuts like a knife.

MORE: 'The Midnight Sky' review: George Clooney's film finds its heart in its actors

Thanks to Weaver's impeccable comic timing and her uncanny ability to bring truth to a soap-opera plot, "The Good House" holds us in thrall. Since alcoholics often don't remember what they do when drunk Hildy is rarely conscious of her worst behavior. Her denial veers close to tragedy in the film's final passages.

The film comes closest to intimacy when Hildy reconnects with her high school crush, Frank Getchell, superbly played by Kevin Kline as a scruffy loner with a droll gift for skewering hypocrites. Despite his unkempt look, Frank is the richest dude in a class-conscious town that snubs him for making his fortune in the garbage collection business.

PHOTO: Sigourney Weaver in "The Good House," 2022.

In a lesser movie, Frank would be Hildy's redemption, the white knight ready to sweep in and save her. But Weaver and Kline -- consummate actors who costarred before in "Dave," and "The Ice Storm" -- never met a cliché they couldn't turn on its dumb head and invest with a tough core of intelligence and wit. They are simply perfection.

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The film also deserves credit for showing exactly what alcohol does for Hildy, the way it gives her courage, however false, to face her demons. In grappling with something most addiction movies avoid -- the very real attraction of alcohol -- the film recognizes what it takes to break free and does so without preaching or fake moralizing.

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It doesn't help that "The Good House" film stuffs in too many characters from the book, though Morena Baccarin scores as a confidante for Hildy and Beverly D'Angelo is a standout as a blackout drunk who shows Hildy what's ahead if she continues to lose herself in the bottle.

Through it all, Weaver, 72, proves she can do anything as an actress. Having received Academy Award nominations for "Aliens," "Gorillas in the Mist" and "Working Girl," she is still without an Oscar. Her triumph in "The Good House" deserves to put Weaver in the race for best actress and to remind audiences what a thrill it is to witness a virtuoso at the top of her game.

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‘The Good House’ Review: Sigourney Weaver Captivates as a Woman Pretending Not to Be Under the Influence

Darkly funny drama offers both a star turn and a powerful ensemble, led by Kevin Kline and Morena Baccarin

This review originally ran Sept. 15, 2021, for the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Like many an entertaining addict, Hildy Good is a great storyteller, providing withering judgments about the people in her orbit amidst all the latest gossip. But like all addicts, the stories she tells always exonerate herself and her behavior — she’s just fine, it’s everyone else who’s messed up. And so what if she sneaks wine after having already been sent to rehab? She never drinks before 5pm, so it’s not like she’s an alcoholic or anything.

Sigourney Weaver plunges herself into the role of Hildy in “The Good House,” and it’s been a while since this titan of cinema has been given a character with the complexity (and the screen time) that the actor deserves. Weaver’s droll comic style has surfaced periodically over the course of her career — for someone who came up alongside Christopher Durang, the movies haven’t allowed her to be funny nearly often enough — but here’s a film that gives her the opportunity to be both hilarious and tragic, in control and spinning completely off course.

Directed by Maya Forbes (“The Polka King”) and Wallace Wolodarsky (the underappreciated “Coldblooded”) — who adapted Ann Leary’s novel with co-writer Thomas Bezucha (“Let Him Go”) — “The Good House” gets away with choices that would have ruined lesser films, from giving the lead character a double-meaning name (and putting it in a punny title) to incorporating first-person, spoken-to-camera narration throughout. It’s also the rare movie that’s both a star vehicle and an ensemble piece; this is Weaver’s show all the way, yes, but she’s surrounded by townsfolk played by the likes of Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Kelly AuCoin, Paul Guifoyle, and Beverly D’Angelo.

The town in question is the fictional seaside village of Wendover, Massachusetts, a Boston bedroom community where Hildy’s family has lived for generations. Divorced, but paying alimony to her ex and financially assisting two grown daughters, Hildy is in perpetual motion as a real estate agent, schmoozing newcomers to town and making the rounds of local parties.

Those shindigs are less fun for her than they used to be — she was forced into rehab after her family had an intervention for her — so now public-facing Hildy has a club soda while home-alone Hildy cracks into her secret wine stash. Also participating in that intervention was Hildy’s former assistant Wendy (Kathryn Erbe) who filched Hildy’s contacts during that rehab stint and set up shop as a rival. Mind you, that’s how Hildy describes what happens, and over the course of the film, it’s more and more clear that Hildy is a supremely unreliable narrator, the way addicts tend to be.

Joel Edgerton Sigourney Weaver Paul Schrader Master Gardener

A local affair between neglected wife Rebecca (Baccarin) and town therapist Peter (Delaney), a missing child, and most of all, the rekindling of Hildy’s high-school romance with local contractor Frank (Kline) will push Hildy to a reckoning with the high-wire act that is her life. But “The Good House” doesn’t play out as a conventional substance-abuse narrative, mainly because Hildy has a such a strong POV that her version of events, no matter how harrowing or damning, never comes off as treacly or sentimental.

Which brings us back to Weaver’s powerhouse performance. There’s not an ounce of self-pity to Hildy, even as she begins coming to grips with the demons of her past and the pain that she has buried under what Peter calls her “Yankee stiff upper lip.” (Weaver could teach even “Fleabag” star Phoebe Waller-Bridge a thing or two about fourth-wall breaking.)

It certainly helps that “The Good House” provides a solid context for Hildy and her life by making Wendover such a vivid place and its residents so fully present. With Nova Scotia filling in for New England, production designer Carl Sprague and location manager Andrew Sheridan give us a full picture of a town, from vast estates to the beach where working-class families congregate to Frank’s half-finished house, with the drywall still showing. Sometimes, it takes a village to tell a story, and the town (including the deep bench of character actors playing the residents) plays a key role here.

Sigourney Weaver Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

If the film missteps at all, it’s in the last 20 minutes or so, where the writers perhaps overplay their hands at both metaphors and metaphysics, not that the screenplay hasn’t laid the groundwork for both. (Also, if Hildy’s ex-husband left her for a man, as she mentions several times, why does that man never accompany her ex to family functions?)

Those are minor flaws in a film that’s so skilled at juggling its tones: In the broader sense, this is a John Cheever–ish tale of a New England town and its secret infidelities and chemical abuse, with an unspoken but ever-present tension between the townies and the weekenders. As it draws deeper into Hildy’s life, however, “The Good House” almost resembles a horror film in which our protagonist is both killer and final girl, with the stakes and suspense emerging from our anticipation of her hitting bottom and just how bad that’s going to be. Instead of “don’t go in the basement,” it’s “don’t uncork that bottle of Merlot.”

It’s all too rare that audiences are treated to a big-screen examination of a woman’s inner turmoil, let alone a woman in the grandmotherly phase of her life; this one pops with both acrid wit and meaningful drama. (Not to mention that American movies where attractive leads in their 70s enjoy an active and joyful sex life appear about as often as Halley’s Comet.) Let us raise a glass (of sparkling water) to more movies like this one, and more roles like this for Weaver.

“The Good House” opens in US theaters September 30 via Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions.

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The good house, common sense media reviewers.

Alcoholism dramedy conjures sobering message; sex, nudity.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Ask for help.

Hildy Good is an aspirational woman in many ways;

Female main character in her 60s/70s is financiall

Sex. A breast is partially exposed from the side i

Language includes "damnedest," "jackass," "s--t,"

A couple of car brands are used to explain a chara

Lots and lots of drinking. Most of the storyline i

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

Hildy Good is an aspirational woman in many ways; she demonstrates compassion and truly cares about those in her community. But she also has flaws, including a dependency on alcohol that she smugly refuses to believe she doesn't have under control. A male love interest sets boundaries and treats women with respect.

Diverse Representations

Female main character in her 60s/70s is financially successful, supporting her entire family, including her ex-husband, who's gay. Characters in their 60s and 70s have full, well-rounded lives, including sexual passion. Characters with autism. Characters with mental illness (anxiety, depression). A few people of color in background/supporting roles.

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Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sex. A breast is partially exposed from the side in several scenes. Passionate kissing.

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Language includes "damnedest," "jackass," "s--t," and a couple of uses of "f---ing."

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Products & Purchases

A couple of car brands are used to explain a character. Computer brand logo is seen in what may be product placement.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Lots and lots of drinking. Most of the storyline is about a character's belief that she's in control of her problematic drinking and that everyone who criticizes her is wrong (this is turned around by the end). Driving under the influence. Pot smoking.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Good House is a wry portrait of a woman with an alcohol dependency. Hildy Good ( Sigourney Weaver ) knows from her infamous ancestor -- accused Salem witch Sarah Good -- that "women who don't care what people think of them are hanged in the public square." So when she's accused of having a drinking problem, she hides it from her family and neighbors' prying eyes. While serious, the movie's themes are handled well and delivered with humor, and relatability is likely to be high for those with loved ones who've struggled with drinking. On the other hand, those who are in recovery themselves may want to be careful: Wine and cocktails are filmed with detailed, longing attention. In addition to lots of drinking, there's a scene that includes lighting a joint. Language includes "s--t" and "f---ing" but isn't constant. The film is notable both for telling the story of a mature woman and for showing the fullness of her life beyond her children, including career, romance, and sex (there are a few glimpses of Weaver's exposed breast). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

This movie depicts the alcohol to a T

What's the story.

In THE GOOD HOUSE, Hildy Good ( Sigourney Weaver ) is the top Realtor in Wendover, Massachusetts. She's invested in the townspeople, as were the ancestors who lived in the small town before her, including Sarah Good, one of the first accused witches of Salem. Like Sarah, Hildy maintains her innocence when she's accused of being possessed by the potent potion known as alcohol. The drama is based on the bestselling novel by Ann Leary and co-stars Kevin Kline , Morena Baccarin , and Rob Delaney .

Is It Any Good?

Hildy Good is an excellent example of a woman who's lived a big life and is still haunted by the demons of the past. It's a little about her mistakes, but it's more about carrying the weight of others on her shoulders since childhood. Hildy is the great-great-great, etc., of Sarah Good, one of the first women falsely accused of witchcraft in the United States. As marginalized women with tremendous strength often do, Hildy overcomes generational trauma by rising far, far above it. So when townspeople -- and her own relatives -- accuse her of being bewitched by alcohol, she's prepared with 350 years of lessons on how women can be marginalized by accusations and gossip.

That's the story of The Good House , though the witchcraft element is underused. Don't expect flying on broomsticks or a Witches of Eastwick- type payoff here: This well-made dramedy about the complexities of single, senior womanhood is far more grounded. What it's really about is portraying someone with an alcohol dependency who's in denial. Using wit and a charming main character, filmmakers Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky tackle the complexities of two topics that films tend to avoid: being a single woman in her 60s or 70s and alcohol addiction. And they manage to make it funny and relatable. And the acting? Weaver and Kevin Kline 's romantic chemistry carries the ease of actors who've played love interests multiple times. The Good House may not be the film audiences think they're in for, but Weaver is so good in the role that it's impossible not to be enchanted.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how The Good House portrays drinking . Do you think it's realistic? Is drinking glamorized?

Hollywood is often accused of ageism when it comes to depictions of older women. How does The Good House compare with other ways you've seen women in their 60s and 70s portrayed in the media?

What happened during the Salem witch trials? Why do you think Sarah Good was targeted? Do you think Hildy's statement that women need to be careful of their public image is still true?

How is Hildy shown to be a contributing citizen of Wendover? Where does her compassion go deeper than that? Why is it important to be invested in our community and the people in it?

Movie Details

In theaters : September 30, 2022
On DVD or streaming : November 22, 2022
Cast : Sigourney Weaver , Kevin Kline , Morena Baccarin
Directors : Maya Forbes , Wallace Wolodarsky
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors, Female writers, Black writers
Studios : Lionsgate , Roadside Attractions
Genre : Drama
Topics : Book Characters
Character Strengths : Compassion
Run time : 103 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : brief sexuality and language
Last updated : February 10, 2023

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‘The Good House’: For a chance to see Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline reunite, film’s flaws easily forgiven

The screen greats co-star (for the third time) in solid drama about alcohol, money, family and late-life romance..

Contractor Frankie (Kevin Kline) and real estate agent Hildy (Sigourney Weaver) reconnect in “The Good House.”

Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions

The magnificent Sigourney Weaver speaks directly to us in the solid and resonant drama “The Good House,” and I mean that in more ways than one. Weaver delivers a powerhouse performance as Hildy Good, a 60-something real estate agent on Boston’s North Shore who is only starting to acknowledge she’s had a serious drinking problem for most of her adult life, and the work certainly speaks to us. But Hildy herself breaks the fourth wall from time to time to address us directly, whether she’s introducing characters as they arrive on the scene, tossing a sarcastic one-liner our way or making excuses for her alcoholism.

We’ve seen this device in so many films and TV series it’s long past its sell-by date, but when Weaver as Hildy talks to us, she does it in such a casual, offhand manner (with the other characters in the scene remaining oblivious, of course, as if they’re in a stage play) that it’s an effective technique, as we can see how skilled Hildy has become at massaging the truth in order to cover her tracks and excuse her actions. She’s lying to us even as she’s lying to the people in her life.

Based on the Ann Leary novel of the same name and co-directed by the team of Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky, “The Good House” is that rare modern-day comedy/drama featuring a romance between two older characters, and given those characters are played Weaver and the equally invaluable Kevin Kline (with whom she co-starred in 1993’s “Dave” and 1997’s “The Ice Storm”), it’s an absolute pleasure and privilege to watch these two gifted pros effortlessly commanding the screen together. They’re as good as they’ve ever been.

Weaver’s Hildy is in a spiral some 18 months after her family staged an intervention and she went through the paces in rehab, only to start secretly drinking the minute she got out. (Hildy rationalizes her behavior by claiming drinking wine isn’t really drinking, and it’s too bad her daughters never met her mother, “because then they’d know what a real alcoholic looks like.”) She’s also on the brink of financial ruin, after her former protégé (Kathryn Erbe) stole most of her clients.

As Hildy breaks open one bottle of wine after another while keeping up a running commentary on events, “The Good House” becomes almost too crowded with supporting players, including Hildy’s well-meaning but whiny grown daughters (Rebecca Henderson and Milly Brown); her ex-husband (David Rasche), who left her for a man but remains a caring friend, and a psychiatrist (Rob Delaney) who’s having an affair with a married woman (Morena Baccarin) who just moved into town, among others. (The supporting players are all excellent.)

Mostly, though, there’s Kline’s Frankie Getchell, a contractor who handles everything from garbage pickup to snow removal to house renovation, and though Frankie looks scruffy and is called a “garbageman” by some, he’s actually one of the wealthiest people in town. “There was a time in my life when I was quite in love with Frankie Getchell,” says Hildy, “and you would’ve been too.” As you might imagine, there’s a chance that romance could be rekindled after all these years.

“The Good House” takes an alarming and not altogether convincing shift in tone in the final act, taking on some deadly serious business involving not one but two characters disappearing, with the possibility both are dead. You might not buy all the plot machinations, but as for the sight of Weaver and Kline together again: That’s an easy sell.

Screen Rant

The good house review: weaver & kline are a winning duo opposite solid ensemble.

Thanks to Weaver's fearless performance, though, The Good House rises above its flaws to become an entertaining and earnest character study.

Based purely on its poster, Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky's The Good House looks like a Nicholas Sparks-eque romance between Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline's Massachusetts-based characters. However, as readers of Ann Leary's book know, there is far more to this story, and its film adaptation strives to capture that with warmth and respect. It mostly succeeds, though it can't quite pull off some late-stage twists. Thanks to Weaver's fearless performance, though, The Good House rises above its flaws to become an entertaining and earnest character study.

Residing in the fictional seaside town of Wendover, Hildy Good (Weaver) projects an air of perfection from her very first scene. A realtor eager to score the best listings, Hildy gives the impression she has everything under control, but there are issues lingering beneath the surface. For one thing, her daughters (Rebecca Henderson and Molly Brown) believe she has a drinking problem, even though Hildy only insists on having a glass or two (or more) at night. For another, her business isn't quite as successful as it once was. As Hildy becomes involved with one of Wendover's newest residents (Morena Baccarin) and brushes up against her old fling Frank (Kline), her life becomes increasingly more complicated.

Related: On The Come Up Review: Lathan's Directorial Debut Is Engaging Coming-Of-Age Tale

Forbes and Wolodarsky co-wrote The Good House's screenplay alongside Thomas Bezucha. In confronting Hildy's drinking issues, the movie must walk a very fine line. It never gets bogged down with seriousness, but it also doesn't shy away from its protagonist's dangerous behaviors. The directors smartly bring the audience directly into Hildy's life by having Weaver break the fourth wall. This is, at first, a bit jarring, but eventually it proves to be effective. By making Hildy address the audience herself, The Good House allows her to become a proper unreliable narrator. She continues to assure viewers she has a hand on her drinking, but her actions promise there is a reckoning ahead. Weaver plays Hildy's blithe attitude well, to the point where it's actually hard not to believe her for a stretch. She leans into Hildy's charisma and handles her gradual descent with the skill many have come to expect from the Alien actor .

Filmed on location in Nova Scotia rather than Massachusetts, The Good House perfectly transports viewers to a sleepy New England town. Forbes and Wolodarsky give the film a great sense of place, weaving in gorgeous shots of "Wendover" to firmly establish the community Hildy lives in. The detail to location gives The Good House an extra layer of realism and beauty. In populating the town, the directors have assembled an excellent cast, from Kline and Baccarin to Rob Delaney and Georgia Lyman. This is truly a place where everyone knows each other, and the richness of the community can be felt throughout. If some elements feel a bit awkward, like Hildy's connection to the Salem witch trials, it's smoothed over by the strength of the cast. Kline shines the most as handyman Frank Getchell; his chemistry with Weaver makes up the heart of The Good House , and he balances Frank's playful nature with his more serious side quite well. Baccarin also stands out as Rebecca, Wendover's newcomer, though it feels like there is far more to her than what the script reveals.

If The Good House falters anywhere, it is near the end, when the plot takes a dark turn. Forbes and Wolodarsky don't quite handle the tonal shift well; it's a bit too jarring and melodramatic to mesh with the rest of the story. It's a stretch where Hildy begins to truly question herself and danger seems to lurk just around the corner, and while Weaver commits to Hildy's complete breakdown, The Good House just can't accommodate this kind of change. The same can be said for occasional flashbacks to Hildy's past which, while filling in some key aspects of her character, push the drama closer to silly rather than impactful due to their staging.

For all its more serious moments, The Good House actually feels a lot like comfort food. It could be due to the vivid community the filmmakers have built, or because of Weaver's multifaceted performance. It also could be because, at its core, The Good House is about inner growth and the value in appreciating loved ones. Hildy goes on quite a journey, and it isn't always the happiest. However, there is genuine warmth to be found here, and it ends on a hopeful note that will surely resonate with viewers.

The Good House releases in theaters Friday, September 30. The film is 103 minutes long and is rated R for brief sexuality and language.

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‘The Good House’ Review: Sigourney Weaver Is a Witchy Alcoholic

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate releases the film in theaters on Friday, September 30.

“I never drank alone before rehab,” cracks Hildy Good ( Sigourney Weaver ), a divorced, 60-year-old real estate agent whose façade of grace and stability is crumbling even faster than that of the quaint Massachusetts harbor town where her family has lived since the days of the Salem witch trials; what’s happening to Wendover isn’t what you’d call “gentrification,” but the influx of chain businesses and white-collar types buying up all the colonial houses has made the place a shell of what it used to be. Hildy is on the verge of getting priced out, herself, and she’s not taking it well.

By the time we meet her, she’s already talking to herself — or to us through the fourth wall — with the performative casualness of someone who’s about to have the rug pulled out from under them. It’s a device that helps Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodorsky’s “The Good House” capture the deceptively cock-eyed tone of the Ann Leary novel on which it’s based, but also one that epitomizes how this weak-kneed adaptation sacrifices the rich interiority of its source material for the sake of something much broader; something that people might buy, even if they can only almost afford to invest themselves into a script this scattershot (co-written by the directors and Thomas Bezhucha). Like its heroine and namesake, “The Good House” is a drama that strives to sell itself as a sly and vaguely supernatural comedy for adults. And like Hildy, the film waits far too long to relinquish that happy-go-lucky idea of itself.

Cringe-inducing as the Ferris Bueller-style narration can be, Weaver sells it with the two-faced panache of a realtor who knows the market better than her clients ever will, and spends most of her time — if not most of her life — waiting for them to realize that she’s right about how much their little slice of heaven should cost. This is Hildy’s corner of the world, and her roots to Wendover are so much older than any of the houses in town that they’re probably gnarled together in sailing knots under the soil. As a result, she naturally carries herself with a certain high-nosed imperiousness; the kind that Weaver has perfected during her post-Ripley years in films like “A Map of the World,” “Heartbreakers,” and “The Ice Storm” (with Ang Lee’s masterpiece of suburban ennui casting an especially long shadow over “The Good House”).

But Hildy isn’t only Wendover’s most fabled real estate agent, she’s also one of its most imperiled homeowners. “Buying a house that’s out of reach is a recipe for misery,” she confesses to us and no one else. “I bought a house I could almost afford, and if everything had gone to plan I should be fine. That’s not what happened.” What happened, we learn during a series of plucky flashbacks that seem to keep punting the film’s actual story further down the field, is that Hildy’s husband of 22 years (David Rashce) left her for a man and forced her to pay a fortune in alimony for the pleasure.

Hildy looked for solace in her job, but sales began to dry up as she fulfilled the Good family prophecy of becoming a full-blown drunk. She looked for solace in her underwritten daughters, but they turned into total narcs once she started drinking and driving. “It’s too bad the girls never met my mother,” Hildy snipes, “because then they’d know what a real alcoholic looks like” (the brief mention of her absent mother is one of the things this movie eventually revisits later as if it were a pressing mystery or a skull key for something that was already unlocked for us).

Now, Hildy cruises around town in a Range Rover she can’t afford and flirts with the sweet-natured waste magnate Frank (“The Ice Storm” co-star Kevin Kline ). Not only is he rich, but he’s a living symbol of the past that Hildy would love to reclaim as her future. Her ancestors survived in this town for 300 years, even when people were trying to burn them alive, and so it’s easy to imagine the historical failure she feels at not being able to afford her own house. The weight on her shoulders only grows heavier — or at least stranger — when it’s implied that Hildy is something of a sorceress herself. Perhaps there is no Hildy, only Zuul? No alcoholism, only an ancient curse? Whatever, cue up “Season of the Witch” on the soundtrack.

All of this business is set at a breezy tempo and scored to the sounds of Theodore Shapiro’s upbeat, Thomas Newman-esque score, as “The Good House” is happily seduced by Hildy’s fun-loving finish. Even after she talks us through her intervention we still feel like she’s got things under control. It’s that kind of movie: blunt yet playful, dusted with New England charm, and just heightened enough that Hildy’s neighbors are played by the likes of Rob Delaney and Morena Baccarin (the latter in the role of Rebecca, a beautiful newcomer who just can’t wait to cause drama). It all seems like the perfect recipe for a wine-loving grandma to get her mojo back.

But “The Good House” isn’t a wicked sweet romp so much as a crucible of self-sabotage, and while Weaver has no hesitation playing someone who’s desperately trying to balance herself between those two modes, Forbes and Wolodarsky are always tacking hard to one side or the other. The film clings to Hildy’s familial sense of self even as her life is falling apart, and while there’s some fun to be had with the rekindled chemistry between Weaver and Kline (whose low-key Boston accent is typical of a delightfully lived-in performance), “The Good House” is so aligned with its delusional heroine that her façade starts to feel as real as the anxieties its scrambling to cover.

Since Hildy is Wendover and vice-versa, which means that we’re also deprived a clearer picture of how the town is losing its own sense of self — a few soggy lines about overpriced coffee don’t cut it — or what the impact might be on the other people who live there. The background mishegoss with Delaney’s character is particularly threadbare, leaving us blindsided by a wild third act (in which two people go missing at once, and Hildy may have killed them both!) that only lines up with the other parts of the movie because it doesn’t. “We’re all pretty much the same,” Hildy admits, and perhaps it’s true that almost everyone in Wendover shares her urgent need for renovation. But “The Good House” spends so much time trying to flip away from its characters’ problems that it becomes hard to notice or care about whatever cracks might be growing in the foundations underneath.

“The Good House” premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.

Most Popular

Movie Review – The Good House (2022)

September 29, 2022 by Robert Kojder

The Good House , 2022.

Directed by Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky. Starring Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Beverly D’Angelo, David Rasche, Rebecca Henderson, Molly Brown, Kathryn Erbe, Kelly AuCoin, Georgia Lyman, Oliver Boyle, Holly Chou, Damien Di Paola, Anthony Estrella, Chris Everett, Paul Guilfoyle, Laurie Hanley, Sebastien Labelle, Jimmy LeBlanc, Silas Pereira-Olson, Carl Sprague, Isabelle D. Trudel, and Alison Weller.

Life for New England realtor Hildy Good begins to unravel when she hooks up with an old flame of hers from New York. Based on Ann Leary’s ‘ The Good House .’

Most reviews begin with a brief rundown of the general plot and details about key characters, which I would love to do for The Good House if it had something resembling a story. It does have a protagonist in Sigourney Weaver’s Hildy Good, a functioning alcoholic real estate broker that splits the running time breaking the fourth wall about having her drinking under control and mingling with the townsfolk of Wendover (a small Massachusetts fishing village with connections to the Salem witch trials), some of which are clients.

Hildy also loans money to her New York-based aspiring artist daughter Emily (Molly Brown), tries to make time for her grandchild from older daughter Tess (Rebecca Henderson), working through a distant relationship brought on by decades of rocky parenting, and openly resents her ex-husband Scott (David Rasche) for coming out as gay and leaving her saddled with alimony payments.

There are a host of supporting characters orbiting her life, either looking to sell a house or buy a house, comprised of couples that end up cheating on one another, with Hildy holding onto that knowledge for potential future blackmail, especially considering the job has been dry lately, and her protégé Wendy Heatherton (Kathryn Erbe) cut ties and started up her agency.

There’s not much to like about Hildy, which directors Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky (co-writing thescreenplay alongside Thomas Bezucha, based on the novel by Ann Leary) appear to be playing into with the character’s constant fourth wall-breaking attempting to justify her drinking, commenting on her misery, and somewhat self-aware that she screws over some of her clients, but Sigourney Weaver’s performance is low-energy and flat. If the point is to cheer on her misdeeds and questionable behavior, she fails at getting viewers on her side.

What’s left is an unlikable character at every turn, denying her problems and routinely attacking her ex-husband’s sexuality (I fully understand there’s a sense of betrayal when someone you are married to comes out as gay and wants a divorce, but Hildy goes down that road so often one can’t help but wonder if she’s flat-out bigoted). The Good House doesn’t stop there with its tastelessness, introducing an autistic child for no other reason than to serve as a plot device down the road.

Along the way, Hildy rekindles a friendship with garbageman/home maintenance worker Frank (Kevin Kline), which genuinely provides some happiness and squashes the urge to drink. She eventually cracks anyway, with temptation scenes as cliché as they come (such as staring at bottles away from the family in another room on Thanksgiving).

Their chemistry together is the only remotely credible aspect here (the entire ensemble around Sigourney Weaver is decent, even if the material is atrocious). Unfortunately, this opportunity to explore a thoughtful romance between older characters on screen is quickly reduced to lowbrow comedy with a cringe sex scene played for laughs rather than something emotional.

A misguided central performance (Sigourney Weaver gives a phony portrayal of a drunk inside a movie that’s not interested in exploring a darker side of addiction), uninvolving character dynamics, and a missed opportunity romance are nothing compared to where The Good House eventually ends up. It turns out that all of these character details and interactions, while naturally leading to a wake-up call for Hildy regarding her alcoholism, also transition (with roughly 15 minutes to go, to give you an idea of how nonsensical and rushed this all is) into a melodramatic thriller that buys into Gildy’s shared bloodline with Salem witches.

Wondering how anyone thought the insanity of the third act mystery was a good idea is certainly better than being bored for the other 80 minutes. The editing also noticeably hacks away at entire conversations but considering this movie was about 15 minutes longer when it premiered that Toronto last year, I can only presume this was done to remove more listless dialogue.

Just take a bulldozer to The Good House ; awful in every way.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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clock This article was published more than 1 year ago

Not-so-great ‘The Good House’ plays like an alcoholism-themed rom-com

The charms of sigourney weaver and kevin kline are not enough to elevate this adaptation of author ann leary’s 2013 bestseller.

Remember back when alcoholism was a punchline?

“The Good House” doesn’t exactly hark back to the days of comic Foster Brooks, whose broadly slapstick “drunk” act was a comedy staple of the 1970s, but Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of a woman with a drinking problem in the film is for the most part too cute for comfort.

Weaver’s talents are nevertheless given a strong showcase in the character of Hildy, a small-town real estate agent on the North Shore near Boston. We meet Hildy as she’s trying to sell a water-view property to a couple who can’t possibly afford it. In the first of many times she addresses the camera, Hildy explains, “This is how it always begins: with denial.”

Of course, Hildy — who has been losing clients to a former protege — is the one who’s in denial. After introducing us to a cast of supporting characters who seem like figures out of a Hallmark Channel adaptation of Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio,” the film jumps to the middle of a family intervention.

Sounds like a sobering drama, right? However, as directed by Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky (who co-wrote the screenplay, based on Ann Leary’s 2013 bestseller, with Thomas Bezucha), the fraught subject gets puts on the back burner in favor of rustic charm. Turns out the setting is perfect for a rom-com — one that plays like the story of the town lush getting back together with an old paramour, Frank, played by the ever-affable Kevin Kline.

Hildy’s frequent asides to the camera could be interpreted as a signal that the character can’t face reality. But the film suffers from a similar problem, depicting her crisis with the blithe touch of a stand-up routine. “Thanksgiving is a lot to ask of a sober person,” Hildy cracks, before sipping a Bloody Mary. “In my mind, wine isn’t really drinking. Vodka definitely is.”

Weaver takes this conflicted role in stride. The actress may be decades away from her breakthrough appearance in “Alien,” but she still conveys authority in her bearing, which makes her character’s fall that much harder.

But even an actress this good can’t elevate the film. It figures: Forbes’s 2014 directorial debut, “ Infinitely Polar Bear ” — a semi-autobiographical story inspired by her father’s bipolar illness — treated mental illness as ukulele-infused dramedy. “The Good House” strikes a similarly cloying tone. Despite Hildy’s complaints about the high price of coffee in her gentrifying town, the film’s folksy score (by Theodore Shapiro) sounds like music from a feature-length coffee commercial — granted, with a central performance whose notes of genuine defeat and regret work against the cozy air of provincial comfort.

Then there are all the on-the-nose needle drops, including Donovan’s “Season of the Witch.” (Hildy is descended from a Salem resident who was accused of witchcraft. It’s a detail the film doesn’t do much with, other than to give the character some vaguely psychic abilities.)

“The Good House” has a lot of potential and features some attractive amenities, including dramatic conflict and a seasoned cast. But like a subpar property, it just doesn’t show well in a highly competitive market.

R. At area theaters. Contains brief sexuality, nudity and strong language. 103 minutes.

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DVD & Streaming

The Good House

Comedy , Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

September 30, 2022
Sigourney Weaver as Hildy Good; Kevin Kline as Frank Getchell; Morena Baccarin as Rebecca McAllister; Rob Delaney as Peter Newbold; David Rasche as Scott; Rebecca Henderson as Tess; Molly Brown as Emily; Kathryn Erbe as Wendy Heatherton

Home Release Date

October 18, 2022
Maya Forbes; Wallace Wolodarsky

Distributor

Movie review.

Hildy Good does not have a problem.

OK, she has lots of problems. But drinking, Hildy will tell you, is not among them.

And if you were Hildy, she might add, you’d drink, too.

She used to be a successful real estate agent—the top broker this side of Boston, she’ll be quick to remind you—before her family forced her to go to (ugh) rehab. When she got back, her former assistant had taken all her clients. Now Hildy’s in debt, barely able to afford payments for her shiny black Range Rover. If that’s not a problem calling for a little Merlot, what is? (Red ink pairs well with red wine, after all.)

Oh, and then there’s her ex-husband, who left her—after 22 years of marriage—for another man. Awkward? You bet it was. It took Hildy plenty of whisky to crawl out from underneath that setback.

And her kids . Both her daughters are all grown up, but Hildy thinks they should both grow a bit more. Tess is always so morose and critical. Emily is so flighty and dramatic. (And still squeezing her for money, by the way.) And both are incessantly worried that Hildy will start drinking again. What, don’t they trust her?

OK, maybe Hildy is drinking again. A little . She’d be happy to tell her kids so if they weren’t so judgy. And really, she hardly drinks at all. Just two, maybe three glasses a night. Well, sometimes, a little more. But only when she’s celebrating. Or flustered. Or sad. Only when she needs a little pick-me-up. A little liquid solace.

Did she say need? Psh. She doesn’t need alcohol. Just wants it sometimes. There’s a big difference. If she needed it—well, that’d be a problem.

But Hildy Good does not have a problem. Just ask her.

Positive Elements

Obviously, Hildy does have a problem—even if it takes her, and perhaps even the moviegoer—time to understand that. The Good House presents itself as a comedy, but in many ways it’s more of a cautionary tale—reminding us of the lies we tell ourselves if and when we (or those we love) slip into substance abuse. And that, in itself, is valuable.

As Hildy’s story moves into a better place, she realizes that she’s struggling—not just with alcohol, but with other issues, too. And perhaps her unflagging New England reserve isn’t enough to carry her through. She gradually recognizes the need for a little help outside herself.

Frank Getchell, Hildy’s longtime friend and one-time beau, becomes a strong, positive force in Hildy’s life. Indeed, a flashback suggests that he’s been doing his best to help Hildy for years. He’s no teetotaler himself. So when Hildy starts drinking again, he doesn’t put the brakes to it. That said, he does tell her that he likes it when she doesn’t drink. And when she gets drunk, he does his best to keep her safe (even when Hildy gets mad at him for doing so).

Spiritual Elements

One of Hildy’s ancestors (eight generations back, we hear) was Sarah Good, one of the first people accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. (She was hung for those supposed crimes in 1692.) And Hildy, some insist, still has that witchy blood flowing through her, too.

People talk about how she can, apparently, read people’s minds—a skill she demonstrates at a dinner party. While she does give an impressive reading, a fellow guest attempts to debunk it. Hildy herself simply smiles, leaving guests to surmise whether it was all a trick or not. But she proves herself later as a savvy student of human nature—telling the camera that she knows as much about her clients after a quick walkthrough of their house as a psychologist might know after dozens of sessions. (She soon gives another “reading” that seems far more a product of her own insight than anything supernatural.)

Later, Hildy seems to be visited by a ghost with uncanny knowledge.

Sexual Content

Hildy tells us that Frank was her “first,” but their relationship didn’t last. In a flashback, when Hildy was unhappily married—and drunk—she makes a pass at Frank, but Frank rejects her advances.

“You think I’m unattractive,” Hildy mopes.

“I think you’re married ,” Frank says.

In the present, Hildy’s not married anymore. And when she swims both in her underwear and later strips off her top (we see the side of her breast), Frank sees her. It’s not long before the two launch into a sexual relationship—beginning with some unexpectedly passionate kissing and winding up in Hildy’s bed. We see them there together in the throes of sex (we see the side of Hildy’s breast but nothing else critical) in a scene that lasts … uncomfortably long. Afterward, an apparently naked Frank pulls back on his clothes, with everything critical hidden.

They kiss and hug and hang out in bed at other times, as well. But Frank once again rejects Hildy’s advances when she’s clearly so drunk she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

Hildy and her ex-husband kiss surprisingly passionately, too. (She scolds him for being gay, suggesting they could’ve had a great marriage otherwise.) Two married people have an affair (Hildy spots them kissing), and the two apparently talk about running off together.

Hildy takes a bath, and we see her from the shoulders up. Hildy’s assistant is often preoccupied with relational drama. A woman gardens in a rather flimsy (and cleavage-revealing) nightgown.

Violent Content

Hildy cracks a joke before she seems to read someone’s mind, asking the onlookers not to hang her as a witch. When she spies a rival realtor, someone tells her not to kill her on the streets. “Too many witnesses,” he says. Another gag involves a reference to “pistols at dawn.”

[ Spoiler Warning ] One morning, after Hildy drove home drunk and apparently blacked out the night before, Frank wakes her up and shows her the massive dent in her car hood. He tells her that a local boy has gone missing, and both worry that Hildy may have hit him. We learn that Hildy’s mom committed suicide. Someone drowns—also, apparently, an act of suicide.

Crude or Profane Language

Two f-words, four s-words and a few other profanities, including “a–,” “crap” and “d–n.” God’s name is misused seven times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

In flashback, we see Hildy walk into what she calls an “ambush”—an intervention by her concerned friends and family.

“If we’re really going to do this, I’m gonna need a drink,” she quips.

Hildy treats her drinking as one big joke. During the intervention, she downplays the fact that she’d dance with all of her daughter Emily’s friends. When her other daughter, Tess, scolds her for passing out in front of guests, Hildy says, “It’s called napping!” When someone reminds her of the DUI she was slapped with recdently, she claims she would’ve been just fine had she not hit that state trooper.

Because Tess threatens to take away Hildy’s babysitting rights, Hildy reluctantly goes to rehab. But by the time the movie starts, she’s started drinking again—first sneaking a glass or two or three of merlot, then spiking her supposedly non-alcoholic Bloody Mary, then drinking secretly in her cellar, then getting very drunk after closing a big deal.

It’s funny, and then it’s not. Perhaps just like drinking problems are in real life. Because so much of the story revolves around alcohol and Hildy’s relationship to it, it’s impossible to detail every scene involving the stuff. But it’s clear that until the bitter end, Hildy thinks her drinking is eminently manageable.

The Good House also reminds us that alcoholism often runs in families. During the intervention, Hildy tells us, “All I could think was the girls never met my mother. Because then they’d know what a real alcoholic looks like.” We hear about a few of Hildy’s mother’s habits—illustrating not only how her alcoholism impacted her and her family (including Hildy), but how she was also dealing with depression.

Hildy and Frank share a bottle of wine over dinner. And when Hildy goes to get another, Frank asks if he can smoke marijuana, too. (Emily, who’s in town for a visit, notes both the smell and the emptied bottles. Hildy, naturally, lies about the bottles—telling Emily that while Frank drinks, she doesn’t touch the stuff anymore.)

Someone smokes a cigarette.

Other Negative Elements

A boy on the autism spectrum throws tantrums and takes a toy away from a little girl.

Alcohol, in various forms, is often used as fuel. It powers everything from oil lamps to engines. And it powers plenty of stories, too.

Sometimes it’s treated as the gas that powers the gag—the substance that keeps the funny drunkard saying funny things. Sometimes it’s treated as party fuel—an essential ingredient for a good time. And, more rarely, it’s treated as the explosive substance it is—reminding us that its misuse can blow up lives.

The Good House reminds us of all three.

People drink to forget the past, to ease fears about the future, to fit in. Hildy drinks for all of these reasons, but one more reason above all: because it’s part of who she is.

When Hildy drinks, she’s charming and warm. When she drinks, she feels like herself . In flashback, she tells her then-husband that she only starts to feel in control by her third drink. She tells a friend, as they sip wine on the floor, that she missed herself— and now she feels like, because she’s drinking again, she’s back. Her identity is intrinsically wrapped up in holding that stemmed glass, sipping that cocktail.

“It’s hard giving up the old version of yourself,” a fellow alcoholic tells her. And it’s true. For some, alcohol feels like the mortar that holds the bricks together, the grease that keeps the engine running. But for Hildy and other alcoholics, the booze is corrosive, too—eating away at the bricks, chewing down the engine. And eventually, it all falls apart.

I’m grateful that The Good House conveys these difficult truths with such deft and, often, humor. If alcohol wasn’t attractive, if it wasn’t fun , it wouldn’t pose much of a problem, would it?

Unfortunately, the film brings a few other problems into this cautionary tale. The film is rated R, albeit a pretty soft R. (Indeed, The Good House was originally listed as PG-13 on Google before someone apparently thought better of it.) And while the alcohol is an important and inescapable part of the story, the sexual content and language easily could’ve been dropped.

The Good House is, in some respects, a good movie. Anchored by Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline, it’s funny and moving with a strong message at its core. But it could’ve been better.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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THE GOOD HOUSE

"sobering look into the life of an alcoholic".

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: One of the more jarring things is the female lead’s habitual lying (she lies to those closest to her until eventually she snaps and asks for help).

More Detail:

THE GOOD HOUSE is a dramatic comedy based on the book by Ann Leary about a female alcoholic who has problems staying sober.

Hildy Good is a realtor in an affluent New England neighborhood. While she once was the first choice of realtor in the town, Hildy’s business slows as fewer people are moving to the town and her competitors are stealing clients.

Hildy also supports her two daughters, who often look to her for financial support. After lining up a sale, Hildy calls her daughters and lets them know she can help them with some extra money.

The movie quickly reveals that tensions were recently high among the Goods, after Hildy’s ex-husband and daughters confronted her about her alcohol addiction. The movie is entirely told from Hildy’s viewpoint, however, and the audience soon realizes Hildy is struggling to stay sober.

Hildy must lie on several occasions and hides a case of wine at her home. Hildy breaks her vow of sobriety whenever she closes a sale or has reason to celebrate. Hildy also finds a drinking partner in one of her previous clients, Rebecca. Hildy and Rebecca bond over their past experiences with unfaithful partners.

Because the movie is from Hildy’s perspective, her self-denial becomes more apparent to the audience and those around her in the movie. She begins to justify her actions but at the same time becomes dissociated from her loved ones and falls back into her alcoholism with reckless abandon.

However, things become personal after she reignites an old flame with a handyman named Frank Getchell. Hildy and Frank knew each other in high school and start to see one another. However, when Hildy’s habits with alcohol jeopardize several friends in the town, Hildy is hit with the reality she can’t control her addiction.

The overall message of THE GOOD HOUSE is to learn to ask for help. However, it doesn’t shy away from diving into the depravity that takes place whenever people are unwilling to seek help. While the movie claims that it is a comedy, the movie focuses more on alcoholism and its consequences.

THE GOOD HOUSE speaks to the many dangers of an alcohol addiction but ends on a note of hope. The acting is engaging, and the story culminates in a powerful scene. However, this moral theme is marred by some strong foul language and sexual promiscuity. Also, Hildy’s husband divorced her to pursue a homosexual relationship with another man, which comes up often. However, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution because of the immoral behavior and pagan elements in THE GOOD HOUSE. Though the movie ends on a hopeful note, it could disturb some viewers if they have a traumatic connection to alcoholism or alcohol abuse.

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The Good House (2021): Movie Review and Ending, Explained

The good house (2021) review: the strenuous disillusionment of a high-functioning alcoholic.

Unresolved trauma, pathological denial in the form of Sigourney Weaver breaking the fourth wall, and generational ignorance about mental illness make up this dark, dramedy romance set in the fictional fishing town of Wendover. Weaver’s Hildy is a badass go-getter realtor who has grown up in a “suck it up” environment and has taken to self-medicating with alcohol to function.

Adapted from Ann Leary’s novel, “The Good House (2021),”; Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky’s affecting film takes a real hard look at the creepingly dangerous face of alcoholism that Hildy breaks the fourth wall to blatantly deny for the most part. Her manner of addressing the audience to justify her drinking is, in essence, a form of self-delusion that keeps her addiction going. An alcoholic drinks alone, but she drinks when her dogs are around. “Wine isn’t really alcohol,” thinks the jittery Hildy as she stuffs cartons full of bottles in her basement.

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Our lead is adorned with two daughters who care, an old flame providing her with enough comfort and warmth to keep her going arguably, and her work which, even though it has sustained her and her family for a long, is now suffering because of her intoxicated recklessness. So why drink? Why fall back after rehab? Forbes and Wolodarsky attempt to remove these exact problematic questions that under-acknowledge, if not completely invalidate, the often festering wounds that lie underneath and enable addiction. Hildy’s problems, no matter how hard she tries to bury them, come right up on the surface, showing the people and us around her that her every move is a cry for help–help that she would most likely shove away like a petulant child. But that doesn’t mean that one should stop trying.

Weaver’s unsurprising brilliance provides a solid ground for the secretly struggling Hildy to walk on with “Season of the witch” playing in the background. Keeping her daughters at arm’s length, Hildy continues to self-destruct and hide her weaknesses under the seemingly sturdy image of a woman who her homosexual husband left. But that isn’t the cause behind her drinking, as casually joked about by the sad trophy wife Rebecca (Morena Baccarin). Rebecca’s affair with psychiatrist Peter Newbold (Rob Delaney) makes way for Hildy and Peter’s conversations that reveal the ugly truth about Hildy’s traumatizing childhood. Being reminded of her younger self finding her mother’s body after her suicide certainly isn’t the sort of reality slap that Hildy needed as we see her drowning herself in alcohol even further.

She soothes, nonetheless, when her old romance rekindles with Frank (Kevin Kline). Weaver and Kline’s on-screen intensity growing with a lobster-greased dinner and dance leaves us hopeful for Hildy. But as wholesome and loving as Frank is, he is a clueless enabler at the same time. The earlier humorous approach of Hildy calling her blackouts “jackpots” gets increasingly darker as her addiction gets worse and slowly wrecks her life.

The film drives further into the scarcely-explored issues that the Dwight family faces, with the town being ignorant about the needs of their autistic son Jake (Silas Pereira Olson). With the risk of the flow straying from the ultimate goal and scattering all over the place, The Good House takes quite a bit of liberty when it comes to introducing sensitive tropes that clearly need more careful handling. But the loyalty lies with Hildy being at the center of the story. And it is her world that all the other characters live in.

Weaver’s talent rescues a storyline that is often blurred by distractions in bringing more to the character that would struggle in a lesser actor’s hand. All of Hildy’s quirks and discomforts, her emotional unraveling hidden under the front of indestructibility that she puts up, come to life with the actress’ unmatched comedic timing wrapped up in the sinister cloak of pathos. With the charming romance made hopeful by Kline’s impressive portrayal of a loving man who will be there for her unconditionally, Hildy quitting her addiction, for the time being, is believable. But will she stick to it?

A Good House (2021) Ending, Explained:

Does hildy accept the reality of her alcoholism .

Coming from a generation of people that compare seeking help to whining, it is not surprising that Hildy’s way of dealing with emotional turmoil is to sweep it under the rug and never talk about it. She keeps her daughters at arm’s length, especially when their conversations get too real. For Hildy, driving drunk is far less unnerving than the thought of opening up. Getting away far too many times with her drunken recklessness has given her terrifying confidence that can potentially land her and the people around her in grave danger.

When Frank, annoyed with her relapse, asks her to go home and sleep it off, arrogant Hildy, in her blackout-drunk state, throws caution to the wind like she always does and decides to drive drunk anyway. Being woken up to frightful news the next morning by Frank, puzzled, Hildy tries to recollect the previous night’s happenings. Frank shows her the smashed car and tells her that Jake is missing. Going crazy, considering the possibility that she may have hit Jake with her car and it didn’t register, Hildy still continues to deny her blackout. As the town forms search parties to find Jake, Hildy opens up another bottle and is left in tears when it falls down and breaks. Her ultimate breakdown starts taking place when she hallucinates talking with Peter and him reassuring her that Jake is okay.

When the cops, looking for Jake, find Peter’s lifeless body in the water, Hildy is expectedly distraught at the sight. It is not just the hallucination that scares her; it is also the fact that she has realized the real cause of Peter’s death–he ended his own life. Having another close encounter with suicide shakes Hildy out of her denial. She finally breaks down and begs for help. This time, she goes to rehab by her own choice and really strives to work on herself. The characteristic happy ending supports this film’s romantic aspect, with Hildy being carefree and content with Kline. As the two set out sailing on a lobster boat, the film’s message becomes clear. Addiction requires help. Help that one has to embrace with the support of their loved ones and their desire for a better life–as the very relevant cliche goes, “admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.”

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'Civil War' review: Kirsten Dunst leads visceral look at consequences of a divided America

We see “Civil War” trending on social media all too commonly in our divided country, for one reason or another, and usually nodding to extreme cultural or ideological differences. With his riveting new action thriller of the same name, writer/director Alex Garland delivers a riveting cautionary tale that forces viewers to confront its terrifying real-life consequences.

“Civil War” (★★★½ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) imagines a near-future America that’s dystopian in vision but still realistic enough to be eerily unnerving. It's a grounded, well-acted ode to the power of journalism and a thought-provoking, visceral fireball of an anti-war movie.

Played exceptionally by Kirsten Dunst , Lee is an acclaimed war photographer covering a fractured America: The Western Forces led by California and Texas have seceded from the USA and are days away from a final siege on the federal government. Lee and her reporting partner Joel (Wagner Moura) have been tasked with traveling from New York City to Washington to interview the president (Nick Offerman) before the White House falls.

After visually capturing humanity's worst moments, Lee is as world-weary and jaded as one can be. But after saving aspiring photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) during a Brooklyn suicide bombing, Lee becomes a reluctant mentor as the young woman worms her way into their crew. Also in the press van: senior journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), hitching a ride to the Western Forces military base in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Most of “Civil War” is an episodic odyssey where Lee and company view the mighty toll taken by this conflict: the graveyard of cars on what’s left of I-95, for example, or how an innocent-looking holiday stop turns deadly courtesy of an unseen shooter. Primarily, however, it’s a disturbing internal examination of what happens when we turn on each other, when weekend warriors take up arms against trained soldiers, or armed neighbors are given a way to do bad things to people they just don’t like.

'No dark dialogue!': Kirsten Dunst says 5-year-old son helped her run lines for 'Civil War'

Given its polarizing nature, “Civil War" is actually not that "political." Garland doesn’t explain what led to the secession or much of the historical backstory, and even Offerman’s president isn’t onscreen enough to dig into any real-life inspirations, outside of some faux bluster in the face of certain defeat. (He’s apparently in his third term and dismantled the FBI, so probably not a big Constitutionalist.)

Rather than two hours of pointing fingers, Garland is more interested in depicting the effect of a civil war rather than the cause. As one sniper points out in a moment when Lee and Joel are trying not to die, when someone’s shooting a gun at you, it doesn’t matter what side you’re on or who’s good and who's bad.

The director’s intellectual filmography has explored everything from ecological issues ( “Annihilation” ) to AI advancement ( “Ex Machina” ), and there are all sorts of heady themes at play in “Civil War.” “What kind of American are you?” asks a racist soldier played with a steady, ruthless cruelty by Jesse Plemons (Dunst's husband) in a disturbing scene that nods to an even deeper conflict in society than the one torching this fictionalized version. There's also an underlying sense of apathy that the characters face, with hints that much of the country is just willfully ignoring the conflict because they'd rather not think about it. But this hellish road trip also maintains a sense of hopefulness − via the growing relationship between Lee and Jessie – and is pretty exciting even with its multitude of horrors.

'You get paid a lot of money': Kirsten Dunst says she's open for another superhero movie

“Civil War” is a thoughtful movie with blockbuster ambitions, and while it does embrace more of a straightforward action flick vibe toward its climactic end, Garland still lands a lasting gut punch. He immerses audiences in the unpredictable nature of war, with gunfire and explosions leaving even the calmest sort on edge, and paints a sprawling canvas of an America forever changed. Thankfully, it’s just a warning and not a promise, using the movie theater as a public service announcement rather than an escape from the real world.

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Guest Essay

The New Movie ‘Civil War’ Matters for Reasons Different Than You Think

A family holding hands, facing a fire engulfing the White House.

By Stephen Marche

Mr. Marche is the author of “The Next Civil War.”

“Not one man in America wanted the Civil War, or expected or intended it,” Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, declared at the beginning of the 20th century. What may seem inevitable to us in hindsight — the horrifying consequences of a country in political turmoil, given to violence and rived by slavery — came as a shock to many of the people living through it. Even those who anticipated it hardly seemed prepared for its violent magnitude. In this respect at least, the current division that afflicts the United States seems different from the Civil War. If there ever is a second civil war, it won’t be for lack of imagining it.

The most prominent example arrives this week in the form of an action blockbuster titled “Civil War.” The film, written and directed by Alex Garland, presents a scenario in which the government is at war with breakaway states and the president has been, in the eyes of part of the country, delegitimized. Some critics have denounced the project, arguing that releasing the film in this particular election year is downright dangerous. They assume that even just talking about a future national conflict could make it a reality, and that the film risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is wrong.

Not only does this criticism vastly overrate the power of the written word or the moving image, but it looks past the real forces sending the United States toward ever-deeper division: inequality; a hyperpartisan duopoly; and an antiquated and increasingly dysfunctional Constitution. Mere stories are not powerful enough to change those realities. But these stories can wake us up to the threats we are facing. The greatest political danger in America isn’t fascism, and it isn’t wokeness. It’s inertia. America needs a warning.

The reason for a surge in anxiety over a civil war is obvious. The Republican National Committee, now under the control of the presumptive nominee, has asked job candidates if they believe the 2020 election was stolen — an obvious litmus test. Extremism has migrated into mainstream politics, and certain fanciful fictions have migrated with it. In 1997, a group of Texas separatists were largely considered terrorist thugs and their movement, if it deserved that title, fizzled out after a weeklong standoff with the police. Just a few months ago, Texas took the federal government to court over control of the border. Armed militias have camped out along the border. That’s not a movie trailer. That’s happening.

But politicians, pundits and many voters seem not to be taking the risk of violence seriously enough. There is an ingrained assumption, resulting from the country’s recent history of global dominance coupled with a kind of organic national optimism, that in the United States everything ultimately works out. While right-wing journalists and fiction writers have been predicting a violent end to the Republic for generations — one of the foundational documents of neo-Nazism and white supremacy is “The Turner Diaries” from 1978, a novel that imagines an American revolution that leads to a race war — their writings seem more like wish fulfillment than like warnings.

When I attended prepper conventions as research for my book, I found their visions of a collapsed American Republic suspiciously attractive: It’s a world where everybody grows his own food, gathers with family by candlelight, defends his property against various unpredictable threats and relies on his wits. Their preferred scenario resembled, more than anything, a sort of postapocalyptic “Little House on the Prairie.”

We’ve seen more recent attempts to grapple with the possibility of domestic conflict in the form of sober-minded political analysis. Now the vision of a civil war has come to movie screens. We’re no longer just contemplating a political collapse, we’re seeing its consequences unfold in IMAX.

“Civil War” doesn’t dwell on the causes of the schism. Its central characters are journalists and the plot dramatizes the reality of the conflict they’re covering: the fear, violence and instability that a civil war would inflict on the lives of everyday Americans.

That’s a good thing. Early on when I was promoting my book, I remember an interviewer asking me whether a civil war wouldn’t be that terrible an option; whether it would help clear the air. The naïveté was shocking and, to me, sickening. America lost roughly 2 percent of its population in the Civil War. Contemplating the horrors of a civil war — whether as a thought experiment or in a theatrical blockbuster — helps counteract a reflexive sense of American exceptionalism. It can happen here. In fact, it already has.

One of the first people to predict the collapse of the Republic was none other than George Washington. “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations,” he warned in his Farewell Address. “This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature.” This founder of the country devoted much of one of his most important addresses, at the apex of his popularity, to warning about the exact situation the United States today finds itself in: a hyper-partisanship that puts party over country and risks political collapse. Washington knew what civil war looked like.

For those Americans of the 1850s who couldn’t imagine a protracted, bloody civil war, the reason is simple enough: They couldn’t bear to. They refused to see the future they were part of building. The future came anyway.

The Americans of 2024 can easily imagine a civil war. The populace faces a different question and a different crisis: Can we forestall the future we have foreseen? No matter the likelihood of that future, the first step in its prevention is imagining how it might come to pass, and agreeing that it would be a catastrophe.

Stephen Marche is the author of “The Next Civil War.”

Source photographs by Yasuhide Fumoto, Richard Nowitz and stilllifephotographer, via Getty Images.

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Jake Gyllenhaal Happily Punches in Road House

By Richard Lawson

Jake Gyllenhaal Happily Punches in ‘Road House

If Nicholas Sparks , that great peddler of sun-soaked honeysap coastal romance, decided to direct an action movie, it might look something like the first hour of Road House (Amazon, March 21). The film, a remake of the rollicking 1989 Patrick Swayze picture, introduces itself sweetly, giving the audience a tour of a friendly Florida Keys town and its one-line-character-description locals. The small-towners are tribal but kind, welcoming newcomer strongman Dalton ( Jake Gyllenhaal ) with wryly raised eyebrows but open arms.

It’s all very nice, complementing Dalton’s relaxed, polite way of moving through the world. Sure, he’s a former MMA brawler with a troubled past (though a slightly less graphic past than Swayze’s version). But he’s so cute and affable. And those island breezes are blowing, and the band’s wailing away at the Road House bar (and grille, I’m assuming), so who cares if Dalton has to break up a little fussin’ and a-fightin’ pretty much every night? Dalton is presented, in all his solid but tender masculinity, much in the same way that Ryan Gosling is in The Notebook , or Channing Tatum in Dear John , or Zac Efron in The Lucky One . They’re all lightly wounded men who are both heroes and objects of loving concern in their cozy Southern communities.

But that whole thing isn’t really director Doug Liman ’s deal. He’s a flashy, snarky kineticist who infuses his best work with hard-edged humor. (Even the tight, unadorned hand-to-hand combat of The Bourne Identity was kind of funny.) Thus Road House , written by Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry , gradually toughens up, though without losing its playful brio.

What a surprisingly agreeable affair, this wholly unnecessary rehash of a 35-year-old curio. Road House suffers from some decidedly modern ailments: it often looks washed-out, and the special effects are cheaply rendered by computers. (Back in the day, there were actual speed boat stunts. There could be again!) But even that flimsiness comes with its own kind of wink. Liman is not trying to make terribly credible art here. We are only meant to make merry orbit around its violence, just as the Road House patrons do.

Much of the movie’s charm rests on its lead. Gyllenhaal doesn’t have the same warm twinkle in his eye that Swayze always used to such lovely effect, but he makes do with the rest of his elastic face. He can go from weary to wary in an instant, his wide mouth curling up or drooping at the edges as Dalton assesses a situation’s severity. Gyllenhaal has done a lot of macho or otherwise gruff stuff in recent years, in search of some balance, I suppose, to his more sensitive work in things like Nightcrawler , or Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway. (A stage performance for the ages, truly.) I would love to see Gyllenhaal work softer most of the time, but I suppose that Road House is a kind of compromise. There is, at least, an accessible strain of vulnerability here, even if Dalton is a near-Terminator in his impervious ability to do harm.

In the film, Dalton goes toe to toe with some local mooks working for the bratty son of a petty crime lord, a boat-loving ponce played with effective slime by Billy Magnussen . The main comedy of the film is the repetitive action of Dalton calmly dispatching, and embarrassing, the many goons who come his way. It is, as ever, good fun to see a procession of swaggering oafs shocked by an underestimated stranger’s prowess, and I happily would have watched the same thing happen again and again until the end credits rolled.

But the movie gods demand some actual adversarial conditions, and so enters Conor McGregor , a famed real-life MMA fighter making his film debut. He plays a ruffian hired by the gang to get rid of Dalton once and for all—the movie’s physical stakes shift quite rapidly from nasty but cartoonish beatings to actual murder. If there are people out there who have long yearned to see Jake Gyllenhaal fight Conor McGregor (much as people want to see Jake Paul fight people, I guess), then they ought to be satisfied. But the movie loses its cocky little strut when Dalton is actually up against a fellow immovable object. I wanted to see Dalton bounce and thrash along unscathed—here’s a rare film that maybe doesn’t need any real conflict.

Or maybe it’s just the McGregor of it all that’s a turn-off. He goes for gonzo and comes up illegible, doing little to brighten up his dark public image . His character is supposed to disrupt the easy idyl of the film—otherwise populated by harmless dopes and good-hearted folks played by Jessica Williams , Daniela Melchior , and Lukas Gage —so he is, in essence, doing his job. But he drowns out the music, harshes the mellow. His silliness is synthetic, while the rest of Road House comes pretty close to the bare-knuckle real thing.

Richard Lawson

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The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

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A strange and memorable but not entirely successful film, "Sweet Dreams" turns colonialism into a source of pitch-black slapstick comedy.

Written and directed by Ena Sendijarević , the film is set in 1900 on a small and obscure Indonesian island, where a sugar plantation baron named Jan ( Hans Dagelet ) has apparently died. "Apparently" meaning that, as far as most of the characters know, he's almost certainly dead, but they don't have a body. This complicates the inevitable battle to figure out who will control the plantation and determine what becomes of it. The setup could've been the start of a murder mystery, but Sendijarević isn't interested in playing those sorts of (enjoyable!) narrative games. Nearly every story point in the film is given to you right away or foreshadowed/telegraphed. What remains is the hows of storytelling and the whys of characterization.

The most important fact in play is that Jan has a young son named Karel ( Rio Kaj Den Haas ) by way of his illicit relationship with an Indonesia plantation worker named Siti ( Hayati Azis ). When the old man dies, his son Cornelis ( Florian Myjer ) and his pregnant wife Josefien ( Lisa Zweerman ) leave the Netherlands to sail around the world to join his widow Agathe ( Renée Soutendijk ) in the muddy jungle to figure out what happens next. What happens next is anger, resentment, and skullduggery, triggered by the revelation that Jan has decided to leave everything to Karel. Grief drives people to extreme behavior. Grief coupled with an expectation of wealth kicks things up a notch, into danger and derangement. A plantation worker named Reza ( Muhammad Khan ) has been agitating on behalf of his fellow workers and even inspired them to go on strike over nonpayment of wages. He becomes a key player in the story, positioning himself as someone who will not only take the fight to The Man (and his women) but also charm Siti into leaving with Karel and starting a new life as his partner.

The movie is, alas, thuddingly obvious during its first third. Every basic observation about the absurdities and evils of colonialism is not just presented but practically served up on a silver platter under a spotlight. A cockroach crawls through the remnants of a fancy family dinner. Josefien (Lisa Zweerman) disembarks from a carriage that's gotten stuck in on a wet road and the movie takes its time observing her fancy boots getting dirty in the mud. It's not that anything the movie is telling us rings false, but that it's all things we probably already knew yet are nonetheless presented as subversive and audacious.

Things start to get interesting when Jan posthumously acknowledges in writing that he's had a son with his mistress, and that the lad will inherit everything. After that, "Sweet Dreams" becomes something faintly akin to a Coen brothers movie in which obtuse, deluded, and/or repulsive people plot against each other and get what they deserve, whether because the insular world that previously overlooked their obvious flaws collectively decides to pay attention and pass judgment, or because characters who believe they're ruthless or clever turn out to be cowardly and/or stupid.

As directed by Sendijarević, shot by Emo Weemhoff and edited by Lot Rossmark , "Sweet Dreams" is aestheticized within a millimeter of its life. The movie is shot in the squarish, 4x3 "Academy" ratio, mostly through wide-angle lenses that cartoonishly distort people and objects (especially when the camera shifts position quickly). Almost every establishing shot is symmetrically framed, not in the manner of a Stanley Kubrick or Wes Anderson , but fetishistic fan art inspired by them. Objects and people within each shot are arranged like elements in a glassed-in art installation. The movie is a zoo with people in it. The movie observes its characters with coldly analytical, often withering precision, up to a point.

Then it all finally gives way to something more overtly lyrical and even dreamlike. The film seems to lose interest in satire and slapstick and takes more detours to present a startling, odd, often beautiful image or situation (often one involving the elemental forces: water, fire, wind, and soil). The story doesn't so much end as stop, but only after delivering a series of moments and set pieces that are shot and edited (in one case, cross-cut) with a mysterious yet unexplained deliberateness that is a hallmark of expressionistic modern art.

Some of the flights of fancy in the final twenty minutes are so beautiful that they retroactively make the earlier parts of the film seem like an overbearing warmup to what's truly special and memorable about the project. There's a very long take near the end that's as surprising and excessive-yet-perfect as one in David Lynch and Mark Frost's "Twin Peaks: The Return" where a man mops an entire bar floor while Booker T. and the MGs' "Green Onion" plays out at full length. It could be that this is a filmmaker who becomes more vital and unique the more deeply she plugs into her subconscious and the more completely she surrenders to it.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Sweet Dreams (2024)

102 minutes

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COMMENTS

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Sweet Dreams movie review & film summary (2024)
A strange and memorable but not entirely successful film, "Sweet Dreams" turns colonialism into a source of pitch-black slapstick comedy. Written and directed by Ena Sendijarević, the film is set in 1900 on a small and obscure Indonesian island, where a sugar plantation baron named Jan (Hans Dagelet) has apparently died."Apparently" meaning that, as far as most of the characters know, he's ...

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‘The Good House’ Review: Sigourney Weaver Plays a Woman With a Secret Everyone Else Can See

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Reviewed online, Sept. 29, 2022. In Toronto Film Festival 2021. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 103 MIN.

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